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In January of 2013, Wal-Mart made a huge announcement to buy an additional $250 billion in US made products by the year 2023. In the last two years since, the company says suppliers have made huge adjustments to change the ways products are produced or assembled in the US.

About two thirds of products sold in Wal-Mart are now made, grown, or sourced stateside. And, with the companys continued support to purchase $250 billion in products over the next 8 years, Wal-Marts merchant network is finding and identifying new domestic manufacturing opportunities. Wal-Mart identifies them in 3 specific ways:

Simply buy more products from its existing American suppliers;

Find new U.S.-made products to sell at Wal-Mart; and

To look where it makes sense to manufacture or assemble products in the U.S.

Read more about Wal-Marts Made in the USA initiative on Packaging Digest.

Retails slumped in December, according to a new report published by Bloomberg. Due to an almost 1% decline in purchases, followed by another 0.4% advance in November, this drop follows large gains in the start of the quarter signaling that consumer spending was still on the rise.

Continued decreases in the unemployment rate and wage growth seem to be encouraging consumers to spend some, but not as much as retailers had wished.

“Maybe the optimism a month ago got a little too heated,” said Guy Berger, U.S. economist at RBS Securities Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut, who is among the best forecasters of retail sales over the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “It’s a weak number but it follows some really strong ones and I don’t think it changes my general feeling on how the economy and consumers are doing.”

Magazine’s art director stresses animation by Christoph Niemann of traffic in the rain is not a ‘technical gimmick’

Famous for its front page art has unveiled its newest innovation - the first animated cover used by a digital magazine. The animation called "Rainy Day" was created by a German artist named Christoph Niemann. Niemann has used animated gifs in the past, including a recent projects for Google Doodles for the first days of summer/winter and a project for MoMA called DESIGN AND VIOLENCE.

The New Yorker’s art director, Françoise Mouly, explained to Mashable how it came to commission an animated gif: “We wouldn’t have done it if it was just a technical gimmick. It had to be a good image. The rain one has the graphic quality and the aesthetic quality that meant it was a modern version of a very old fashioned New Yorker cover." She added: “I don’t want to set up an expectation that from now on it’s always going to be some kind of added web version of the cover. Most often it will stay as it is. I think that’s the most powerful.”